TOWebViewController
An Inline Web Browser for iOS Apps
TOWebViewController
is an open-source UIViewController
subclass designed to let apps quickly present web page content to its users, without needing to kick them over to Safari. TOWebViewController
has been designed from the ground up to be easily integrated into existing projects, to take advantage of the latest features of iOS, and to optionally be backwards compatible with (significantly) earlier versions of iOS.
Features
- Powered by
UIWebView
, backwards compatible down to iOS 5. - Full navigation buttons set, including back, forward, refresh and an optional share/action button.
- Detects whether being pushed modally, or via a navigation controller and adjusts the UI accordingly.
- A page load progress bar (using ninjinkun's amazing algorithm).
- Plays a smooth, elegant rotation animation if/when the user rotates the device.
- Icons are procedurally generated by CoreGraphics (ie, no unnecessary image assets at all!).
- Compatible with iOS 8 size classes, including split-screen on iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4 and iPad Pro.
- 1Password automatic password input extension support.
- (TODO) A proper delegate system to allow external classes to interact with this controller.
- (TODO) Basic navigation history that displays when long-pressing the back/forward buttons.
- (TODO) A proper 'Error Occurred/Not connected to the internet' dialog view.
Example
TOWebViewController
is smart enough to be able to tell when it's being presented as a modal popup, and when it's being pushed onto a UINavigationController
and to change its button layout accordingly.
Presenting as a Modal Dialog
When presenting as a modal popup, it is still necessary to create a parent UINavigationController
in order for the buttons to display properly:
TOWebViewController *webViewController = [[TOWebViewController alloc] initWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.apple.com/"]];
UINavigationController *navigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:webViewController];
[self presentViewController:navigationController animated:YES completion:nil];
UINavigationController
Pushing onto a TOWebViewController *webViewController = [[TOWebViewController alloc] initWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.apple.com/"]];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:webViewController animated:YES];
System Requirements
iOS 5.0 or above
Installation
As a CocoaPods Dependency
Add the following to your Podfile:
pod 'TOWebViewController'
As a Carthage Dependency
Add the following to your Cartfile:
github "https://github.com/TimOliver/TOWebViewController"
Manual Installation
Download this project from GitHub, move the subfolder named 'TOWebViewController' over to your project folder, and drag it into your Xcode project.
After that, you'll need to link the following system frameworks to your project:
- QuartzCore.framework
- CoreGraphics.framework
- MessageUI.framework
- Twitter.framework
WKWebView
adoption?
Why no While WKWebView
does look much nicer than UIWebView
, it has several show-stopping issues. Most importantly, session and cookie data that is created inside a WKWebView
isn't accessible by the rest of the Foundation framework. Since a large goal in building this project was to allow users to log into web accounts and subsequently use that session to download files, this is simply unacceptable.
TOWebViewController
will not be adopting WKWebView
at any point in the future. If you would like an alternative view controller that does, please give DZNWebViewController a try!
SFSafariViewController
?
What about Starting from iOS 9, Apple now provides a built-in web view controller of similar functionality named SFSafariViewController
. If your app is only targeting iOS 9, and it completely fills your requirements, then it is absolutely recommended that you adopt SFSafariViewController
instead of TOWebViewController
.
That being said, if you are still targeting lower iOS versions, or require more customisability than SFSafariViewController
provides, then TOWebViewController
can still serve as a viable alternative.
Credits
TOWebViewController
was originally created by Tim Oliver as a component for iComics, a comic reader app for iOS.
Thanks also goes to TOWebViewController
's growing list of contributors!
iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6s Plus device mockups by Pixeden.
License
TOWebViewController is licensed under the MIT License. For more information, please see the LICENSE file.